This is a short little, forced confession I had made out loud to myself this past summer. It still rings true and I can't help but feel that moving back to a small, quiet town has helped me at least start to listen to the thoughts I have rolling around in my head.

I hope to uncover new ways to overcome my self-prescribed and diagnosed short-comings through my art process.

...I have recently started to realize how burdened I have become with the ways I feel imperfect. It angers me to feel how deeply these unhealthy and sickeningly dangerous thoughts have wedged themselves; they are somewhere in between the microscopic intricacies of the very clockwork that keeps my body functioning and the volatile lies floating in and out of my head about what I should look like, who I should be and where I should be in life.

I have always felt I couldn't say how ashamed I was about myself out loud. I now see that this has been poisoning me at the very core and has crippled me in every realm. My self-shame has taken me down new paths where I never thought I'd find myself.

Speaking of finding myself... I find myself more and more disgusted with the subtle ways these lies fit ever so nicely into our everyday lives, how they snuck in when we were children and how we further depreciate our self-worth by agreeing with said lies for God know what reason(s). I guess this is what I've been mulling over and chewing on while working on my artistic pursuits - perhaps subconsciously for years... Maybe it's liberation via Dick Blick... Either way, I present my middle finger to self-shame...